There were no barking dogs, no clucking hens, no lowing cattle, no sounds of childish laughter, no sturdy-voiced men or softer-spoken women exchanging greetings.

The stables and sheds were strangely silent.
The village was a small one.

He turned into it, entered the first house, stumbled over a corpse! The silence was of death.

With a beating heart and with a strength he did not know he possessed, he turned aside and ran straight to his father's house.
Standing by itself it was a larger, better and more inviting house than the others.

The gate of the surrounding stone wall was battered off the hinges, the front door of the house was open, the garden was trampled.